Fitzgerald's space

The Office of the President of Guyana has released a "low carbon development strategy". There are many questions associated with that document. See the document called AFC_Review_LCDS_FOR GUYANA.pdf saved in Folder titled “Environment & Development” for a critique of the low carbon development strategy dreamed up by the Jagdeo administration in Guyana. This is a draft documnet not reflecting the official position of the AFC at this time.

Man beaten at Beres Hammond’s studio

Posted By Stabroek News (Guyana) staff On April 2, 2009 @ 5:03 am. Story taken from Gleaner News (Jamaica) 

The Office of the President of Guyana in December 2008 issued a memorandum titled "Creating Incentives to Avoid Deforestation".

This is very interesting study that should be read and discussed as it points to the need to value the ecosystem services provided by forests in terms of their value both to the nations in which those forests are located and the world. This issue has important governance implications as if there is agreement on compensating countries for the environmental services provided by their forests then the question of accountability for those funds becomes a very important issue. 

See folder titled "Environment and Development" on Fitzgerald's space for a copy of the paper.

The election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the USA is an event that can be described as the coming of age in terms of race relations for this country. It is also a tremendous signal to the rest of the world that in spite of the missteps of the George W. Bush administration the US is still that shining city on a hill providing hope and inspiration. The country now has the potential to build a democracy based on the ideal that we look at the content of people's characters and not the color of their skin. The intellectual preparation of Obama and his experience as a community organizer and legislator gives him a solid foundation to lead this process. YES WE CAN!

This piece by Frank Schaeffer of The Huffington Post is I think a useful indicator of the possibilities of the Obama Administration:

Obama Will Be One of the Greatest (and Most Loved) American Presidents
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Great presidents are made great by horrible circumstances combined with character, temperament and intelligence.. Like firemen, cops, doctors or soldiers, presidents need a crisis to shine. Obama is one of the most intelligent presidential aspirants to ever step forward in American history. The likes of his intellectual capabilities have not been surpassed in public life since the Founding Fathers put pen to paper. His personal character is also solid gold. Take heart, America: we have the leader for our times.

I say this as a white, former life-long Republican. I say this as the proud father of a Marine. I say this as just another American watching his pension evaporate along with the stock market! I speak as someone who knows it's time to forget party loyalty, ideology and pride and put the country first. I say this as someone happy to be called a fool for going out on a limb and declaring that, 1) Obama will win, and 2) he is going to be amongst the greatest of American presidents.

Obama is our last best chance. He's worth laying it all on the line for.

This is a man who in the age of greed took the high road of community service. This is the good father and husband. This is the humble servant. This is the patient teacher. This is the scholar statesman. This is the man of deep Christian faith.

Good stories about Obama abound; from his personal relationship with his Secret Service agents (he invites them into his home to watch sports, and shoots hoops with them) to the story about how, more than twenty years ago, while standing in the check-in line at an airport, Obama paid a $100 baggage surcharge for a stranger who was broke and stuck. (Obama was virtually penniless himself in those days.) Years later, after he became a senator, that stranger recognized Obama's picture and wrote to him to thank him. She received a kindly note back from the senator. (The story only surfaced because the person, who lives in Norway, told a local newspaper after Obama ran for the presidency. The paper published a photograph of this lady proudly displaying Senator Obama's letter.)

Where many leaders are two-faced; publicly kindly but privately feared and/or hated by people closest to them, Obama is consistent in the way he treats people, consistently kind and personally humble. He lives by the code that those who lead must serve. He believes that. He lives it. He lived it long before he was in the public eye.

Obama puts service ahead of ideology. He also knows that to win politically you need to be tough. He can be. He has been. This is a man who does what works, rather than scoring ideological points. In other words he is the quintessential non-ideological pragmatic American. He will (thank God!) disappoint ideologues and purists of the left and the right.

Obama has a reservoir of personal physical courage that is unmatched in presidential history. Why unmatched? Because as the first black contender for the presidency who will win, Obama, and all the rest of us, know that he is in great physical danger from the seemingly unlimited reserve of unhinged racial hatred, and just plain unhinged ignorant hatred, that swirls in the bowels of our wounded and sinful country. By stepping forward to lead, Obama has literally put his life on the line for all of us in a way no white candidate ever has had to do. (And we all know how dangerous the presidency has been even for white presidents.)

Nice stories or even unparalleled courage isn't the only point. The greater point about Obama is that the midst of our worldwide financial meltdown, an expanding (and losing) war in Afghanistan, trying to extricate our country from a wrong and stupidly mistaken ruinously expensive war in Iraq, our mounting and crushing national debt, awaiting the next (and inevitable) al Qaeda attack on our homeland, watching our schools decline to Third World levels of incompetence, facing a general loss of confidence in the government that has been exacerbated by the Republicans doing all they can to undermine our government's capabilities and programs... President Obama will take on the leadership of our country at a make or break time of historic proportions. He faces not one but dozens of crisis, each big enough to define any presidency in better times.

As luck, fate or divine grace would have it (depending on one's personal theology) Obama is blessedly, dare I say uniquely, well-suited to our dire circumstances. Obama is a person with hands-on community service experience, deep connections to top economic advisers from the renowned University of Chicago where he taught law and a middle-class background that gives him an abiding knowledgeable empathy with the rest of us. As the son of a single mother, who has worked his way up with merit and brains, recipient of top-notch academic scholarships, the peer-selected editor of the Harvard Law Review and, in three giant political steps to state office, national office and now the presidency, Obama clearly has the wit and drive to lead.

Obama is the sober voice of reason at a time of unreason. He is the fellow keeping his head while all around him are panicking. He is the healing presence at a time of national division and strife. He is also new enough to the political process so that he doesn't suffer from the terminally jaded cynicism, the seen-it-all-before syndrome afflicting most politicians in Washington. In that regard we Americans lucked out. It's as if having despaired of our political process we picked a name from the phone book to lead us and that person turned out to be the very man we needed.

Obama brings a healing and uplifting spiritual quality to our politics at the very time when our worst enemy is fear. For eight years we've been ruled by a stunted, fear-filled, mediocrity of a little liar who has expanded his power on the basis of creating fear in others. Fearless Obama is the cure. He speaks a litany of hope rather than a litany of terror.

As we have watched Obama respond in a quiet reasoned manner to crisis after crisis, in both the way he has responded after being attacked and lied about in the 2008 campaign season, to his reasoned response to our multiplying national crises, what we see is the spirit of a trusted family doctor with a great bedside manner. Obama is perfectly suited to hold our hand and lead us through some very tough times. The word panic is not in the Obama dictionary.

America is fighting its 'Armageddon' in one fearful heart at a time. A brilliant leader with the mild manner of an old-time matter-of-fact country doctor soothing a frightened child is just what we need. The fact that our 'doctor' is a black man leading a hitherto white-ruled nation out of the mess of its own making is all the sweeter and raises the Obama story to that of moral allegory.

Obama brings a moral clarity to his leadership reserved for those who have had to work for everything they've gotten and had to do twice as well as the person standing next to them because of the color of their skin. His experience of succeeding in spite of his color, social background and prejudice could have been embittering or one that fostered a spiritual rebirth of forgiveness and enlightenment. Obama radiates the calm inner peace of the spirit of forgiveness.

Speaking as a believing Christian I see the hand of a merciful God in Obama's candidacy. The biblical metaphors abound. The stone the builder rejected has become the cornerstone... the last shall be first... he that would gain his life must first lose it... the meek shall inherit the earth....

For my secular friends I'll allow that we may have just been extraordinarily lucky! Either way America wins. Only a brilliant man, with the spirit of a preacher and the humble heart of a kindly family doctor can lead us now. We are afraid, out of ideas, and worst of all out of hope. Obama is the cure. And we Americans have it in us to rise to the occasion. We will. We're about to enter one of the most frightening periods of American history. Our country has rarely faced more uncertainty. This is the time for greatness. We have a great leader. We must be a great people backing him, fighting for him, sacrificing for a cause greater than ourselves.

A hundred years from now Obama's portrait will be placed next to that of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. Long before that we'll be telling our children and grandchildren that we stepped out in faith and voted for a young black man who stood up and led our country back from the brink of an abyss. We'll tell them about the power of love, faith and hope. We'll tell them about the power of creativity combined with humility and intellectual brilliance. We'll tell them that President Obama gave us the gift of regaining our faith in our country. We'll tell them that we all stood up and pitched in and won the day. We'll tell them that President Obama restored our standing in the world. We'll tell them that by the time he left office our schools were on the mend, our economy booming, that we'd become a nation filled with green energy alternatives and were leading the world away from dependence on carbon-based destruction. We'll tell them that because of President Obama's example and leadership the integrity of the family was restored, divorce rates went down, more fathers took responsibility for their children, and abortion rates fell dramatically as women, families and children were cared for through compassionate social programs that worked. We'll tell them about how the gap closed between the middle class and the super rich, how we won health care for all, how crime rates fell, how bad wars were brought to an honorable conclusion. We'll tell them that when we were attacked again by al Qaeda, how reason prevailed and the response was smart, tough, measured and effective, and our civil rights were protected even in times of crisis....

We'll tell them that we were part of the inexplicably blessed miracle that happened to our country those many years ago in 2008 when a young black man was sent by God, fate or luck to save our country. We'll tell them that it's good to live in America where anything is possible. Yes we will.

"In the Caribbean policy makers have to understand that preferences in international trade are going away. Having to compete should be seen as a good thing for Caribbean economies".
We are intensely supportive of the concept of and necessity for Caribbean integration. But it does not stop us from facing bald reality.
Mr John Keynes, it was, who pointed to an eternal truth, that every statesman (a euphemism for politician) was unwittingly the “slave of some defunct economist”. This is particularly the case when the politician has an intellectual inferiority complex but yearns for acceptance by being a recognised disciple of known intellectuals whose ideas they repeat, even when they are of little or no relevance to the current policy dilemma.
In the Caribbean, President Bharrat Jagdeo of Guyana comes to mind. In this regard, he is maintaining a Guyanese tradition. Cheddi Jagan was an apostle of the Stalinist perversion of Marxism, which passed as the Soviet model. President Forbes Burnham, the Caribbean’s Robert Mugabe, was an unrepentant dictator practising a brand of fascism called Co-operative Socialism.
President Jagdeo, trained in the Soviet Union, believes in the developmental state, which plays the leading role in economic development. Like his predecessors, he does not believe in markets and regards private enterprise as a form of theft.
The extreme poverty of Guyana, a vast land blessed with abundant resources of every kind, is testimony to bad economic policy. Not content to preside over the steady impoverishment of his people (those who have not yet migrated) he now proposes the implosion of the few remaining economic activities.
Following the academic delusions of two prominent Guyanese, neither of whom have any practical experience in trade negotiations, he raised the issue of delaying the signing of the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) at the recent Caricom summit in Antigua & Barbuda. None of the concerns he raised were found to be technically valid or politically feasible.
In embarrassing defeat, he protested that he must consult with the private sector and civil society. No explanation was offered as to why he had postponed these consultations since December of last year when the negotiations were completed. He now faces public humiliation by Guyana’s exporters of sugar, rum, rice and seafood whose survival and enhanced prospects depend on the EPA.
Among the many redundant proposals was the notion that CARIFORUM should postpone signing and wait to join with the African countries who, we note, do not have the same interests because most are least developed countries and already had duty-free quota-free access to the European market via the Everything But Arms Initiative.
We need the EPA to get that access. In any case, the possibility for joint ACP negotiations, preferential treatment in perpetuity for special commodities and the right to non-reciprocity were given up by our negotiators when they succumbed to the terms handed down by the EU in the Cotonou Agreement.
If Mr Jagdeo wants Guyana to opt out of the EPA to chase the mirage of a goods-only agreement, then the rest of CARIFORUM should go ahead without Guyana and sign the existing EPA.
The consequences would be dire for its exports to the EU and Caricom. Guyana would lose eligibility to the development assistance linked to the implementation of the EPA. It would slow down the already comatose Caribbean Single Market and Economy, which is likely to be rescheduled until the “Twelfth of Never”.